Yeah, I’m a month behind in finding out about this, but damn, the Teatro D1 Oncinema with a 7″ 1280×720 touch screen looks really cool (and expensive at 5500 euros).

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Yahoo - Washington Post, Microsoft’s Improved Media Center Still Falls Short:

Microsoft’s Media Center edition of Windows XP — a special layer of software designed to let people enjoy their digital photos, music and videos from across the room — has to rank as one of the company’s bigger disappointments in a while. All the money Microsoft has thrown into promoting Media Center has yet to lend it any momentum in the market.

There was a lot of internal discussion about this article and here are some thoughts:

• The reviewer either did not discover (in which case this is a serious problem for us), or did not mention a number of new features such as OTA HDTV, dual tuner, extensibility platform, improved start menu, device sync,…
  

• Misses the point/idea of setting up a Media Center in the den and then an extender in the living room. This configuration would not result in you need either a large TV to read email or a chair close to your TV.
  

  Unless you devote a separate computer for Media Center use, you will either need an enormous (and enormously expensive) screen to make your e-mail legible from the couch, or you’ll need to keep a desk chair handy for up-close use.

• ‘The biggest change in this 2005 elease is an expanded set of photo editing tools’. The biggest change is certainly not this. We only add crop to our suite of photo editing tools. To say crop is a bigger change than device sync, OTA HDTV, extender,.. is quite the statement :).
• ‘When scanning through large collections of photos, the right-arrow key doesn’t move you from one row to the next, only within rows.’ True, but our behavior mimics that of the Windows (2′) shell.
• ‘And when you’re done touching up a picture, using the back button will first present you a view of that photo before your edits.’ Valid complaint.
• ‘It’s far too easy to empty that [music] queue by pushing the wrong button.’ Completely agreed. Unfortunately we could not solve this before shipping even though we know it was a problem.
• MSN Music store problems. Sounds possible, but hard to diagnosis without more information.
• ‘ Media Center’s Web radio feature remains a joke; it only presents two, extra-cost services run by MSN and Napster’. The reviewer must have missed Live 365 (free), NPR (free), Napster, and MSN Music in Online Spotlight. Yes, we should improve their integration into the radio space.
• ‘Microsoft forgot to provide any way to edit recordings’. Did we forget or did we anticipate that the studios who we need to get along with might not like that?
• ‘ Music playback was mostly reliable, but live or recorded TV varied between near-paralysis (with the screen mostly frozen) and merely annoying’. The problem the reviewer is experiencing with his Extender is that there is a double wireless hop in his network since his Media Center is connected wirelessly in addition to this Extender. This is an unsupported configuration.

While the article has some valid feedback, overall I think the reviewer did not do his homework.

(These views are my own and do not represent those of my employer).

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Business Week. Inside Microsoft’s Consumer Strategy:

The Extender product, which I use at home, is a great product and proves that integration can deliver great customer benefit.

Okay, so this isn’t the most interesting quote from theinterview with XBox senior VP, Robbie Bach, but I wanted to point out that I was one of two eHome team members to visit his house and setup his Media Center and Extender :). As you’d expect he has an amazing home theatre setup.

So what is the most interesting quote?

A digital lifestyle is developing that incorporates things you do online with things you do with entertainment, with things you do with gaming, with things you do with music, movies, TV. As that all comes together, Xbox is certainly going to play an important role.

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If you add a caller ID modem to your Media Center and can’t get the caller id functionality in Media Center to work (so the notifications/toasts do not appear or if you don’t see a caller id setting in Settings > Messenger and Caller ID) then you need to delete this registry key:

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Media Center\Service]

“UseTelephony”=dword:00000000

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Last night we had a Media Center geek a dinner in Bellevue. Thanks to everyone who came out!

Some of the questions I remember from the night:

Can I improve how the XBox extender looks on my TV?

The XBox Extender is optimized for display on a CRT TV. If you are not using a CRT television, so a plasma, LCD or possibly a DLP, you will want to get the TweakMCE power toy from the winter fun pack and turn off the TV skin.

Why can’t I play synchronized audio throughout my home?

This question was from the two home theater installers and we spent some time discussing what they were looking for and if it would be possible to build a 3rd party app to do it. The short answer is that I think there is currently not enough mass market demand for this feature.

Who do we design Media Center for?

This is a great question worthy of a long post. The short answer is that we design Media Center for a very broad audience. We want Media Center to be easy to use for someone like my Mom, but powerful enough that it does everything that I, a power user would want. We also work very hard to ensure that it looks good on not just a plasma or LCD display connected over DVI, but also that it looks good on a ten year old 27″ TV connected via coxial.

Why are my media libraries different on my Extender than on my MCE / Why do they get out of sync?

Answer to that is in my my Media Discovery post.

Questions about domain join

Answer here, You cannot join your computer to a domain in Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005

Does the HP z545 have a DVI slot?

Yes

How do I watch pay per view content?

Use Media Center to navigate to your pay per view channel. Start manually recording. Pick up your set top box remote and start the show.

If you had a question I’ve forgotten but would like to see writen up let me know in the comments.

Other notes:

• Charlie gave away three Hauppauge single NTSC tuner cards
• Charlie brought a Hush PC case (a fanless case) and we cracked it open to check out the heat sinks
• Michael showed us his RSS application
• Scoble gave away some Channel 9 guys

Other blogger writeups:

• Wangjianshuo’s blog
• Scoble

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John Elsbree an architect on the MCE team has written an Expert Zone article on, Tweaking Your Media Center PC’s HDTV Lineup:

Once you have Media Center configured for DTV, this article describes some additional adjustments you can make to improve your overall experience with your Guide lineup of DTV channels. For example, you can search for additional programming services that otherwise wouldn’t appear in your lineup. Also you may be able to locate missing program listings for some of your channels and adjust the antenna to increase the TV signal strength. Finally, you can learn how to correct some issues that may be preventing you from successfully tuning to certain channels.

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Reminder: Media Center Dinner Tonight

6pm at Crossroads.

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Here is an article from WhiningDog.NET on Building a Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 PC.

The best tip was a pointer to the MCE approved component list. I didn’t even know this excellent list existed :).

Now if only someone could recommend a good value low cost video card to me…

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XPMCE, Setting your preferred tuner via the registry

We had considered this for TweakMCE but cut it do the custom work to change this registry setting. All of the settings in TweakMCE with the exception of setting the remote control ID are very straight forward.

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In case you are curious here is my home setup:

Living room:

• Samsung 46″ DLP TV (HLP4663W)
• Halo brand XBox connected to the TV with component
• Denon ADV-1000 5.1 receiver connected to Media Center with optical connection
• Gateway 901X Media Center 2005
  • Connected to the TV with DVI
  • Connected to my network with a 100mbps link
  • P4 3.0
  • 512MB ram
  • 200 gig HD
  • ATI Radeon 9800 Pro
  • DVD burner
  • ATI DTV Wonder ATSC tuner connected to a lame antenna
  • NVIDIA NTSC tuner connected to a Motorola digital cable set top box
  • Creative Audigy card
  • Gyration keyboard and mouse (I hate the mouse)

Bedroom:

• 13″ Gateway LCD TV
• Media Center Extender
  • Connected via 802.11a
• Computer speakers

Network:

• Netgear FWAG114 802.11a/b/g wireless router

Update: Photo of my setup

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